Nine: Occlumency

Spring 1996

The next evening, Miss Granger returned to my dungeon for her first Occlumency lesson. I was well-prepared: cerebrum scrubbed of emotion, mental shields firmly erected. Still wary after the debacle with Potter, I left the Pensieve safely in my heavily-warded quarters, having removed to it any trace of my own sensitive memories. As with all of my meetings with her, the office door remained open to avoid even the possibility of unseemly suspicions on the part of any eavesdroppers. After all, one can never assume he is not being overheard. (At times, even the very walls of Hogwarts seemed to be listening.)

I would like to take a moment to impress upon the reader just how serious is the responsibility of teaching Occlumency, much more so than Potions. Its instruction must be approached with the utmost caution and care. Professorial conduct is of the greatest importance regarding such a delicate encounter between teacher and student, and self-command of both parties is essential. Due to the potential for abuse, its teaching is generally restricted to particularly gifted students or exceptional circumstances, under which purview the threat of the Dark Lord certainly applied. Even when warranted, strict laws pertain to the use of Legilimency, even for instructional purposes, and the direst of penalties accompany its misuse, as set in the International Statutes and the Pupil Protection Act of 1732 (which also handed down to us such enlightened policies as the forbiddance of whipping with anything larger than Merlin's wand and an end to the hanging of students by their thumbs in the dungeon). First, informed consent¹ is essential at any and every given moment of instruction. Normally, the corollary to this states that the pupil must be older than the legal age of consent (though apparently in Dumbledore's mind this rule applied neither to Potter nor members of his fan club). Confidentiality of any and all information shared during sessions is a second requisite, including judgements regarding students' strengths and weaknesses, emotions, reactions, and even, if necessary, confidentiality of the lessons themselves. Third, rigorous standards for teacher training and selection are codified by law, albeit seldom applied.

I hadn't any reason for the slightest qualm of conscience. I was a highly qualified teacher, experienced in the rules of conduct regarding Occlumency instruction, and Granger, I grudgingly allowed, would likely qualify as a gifted student even without the necessity of wartime instruction. Nevertheless, due to the historic admonitions and my recent debacle with Potter, I was naturally apprehensive about the actual process of instructing Miss Granger in Occlumency. Firstly, I had never before taken a female Occlumency student and feared an accidental blunder upon some feminine detail or intimate memory. In addition, I was not keen on discovering what was sure to be aversion towards me on her part, and I resolved to avoid any memories associated with her assistantship, Potions, or myself. But she would know none of this: I assumed an expression of profound disinterest as she entered the room and sat in the chair across from my desk, more timidly than usual.

"Erm, before we start, I thought you should know –" She paused and seemed to be deliberating. I waited for the remainder of her sentence, mildly curious despite myself. "– I've broken some Hogwarts rules. You know, a few. Over the years."

"Are you by chance referring to a certain brewing of Polyjuice Potion?"

She gasped. "You know about that?"

"Obviously."

"But – but you didn't punish us."

"Not yet," I said with a saturnine smile. She shrank a little into her robe. I continued, "Is that all? Or are there are other dark deeds in your past?"

". . . Maybe."

"Well then, we'll just have to see what they are, won't we?"

She, perched stiffly upon her chair, looked terrified. Lord only knew what Potter had told her.

"Miss Granger," I said, moved (very slightly) to pity. Perhaps some preliminary words were in order, an introduction to pique her intellect and distract her a bit. "You forget that I've already seen all your misconduct in Potter's mind. You are not going to be expelled. Now I shall give you a bit of background first. You may take notes if you wish."

She seemed more at ease as she retrieved quill and parchment.

I began with the question: "What is Occlumency?"

"Occlumency is the protection of the mind from Legilimency, which is the retrieval of one's emotions and memories by another witch or wizard." I raised an eyebrow at her. "Sir," she added hastily.

"I take it you have been reading up on Occlumency?"

"I've been trying, sir, but I haven't found much more than a few paragraphs –"

"That is because Occlumency is not a subject that can be taught through words. It must be experienced. You are wasting your time in the library."

She looked uncomfortable. "That's what it said in the book too," she said.

With my most withering look, I continued: "As you have undoubtedly read, Legilimency and Occlumency are very much related – two sides of the coin, as they say. A skilled Legilimens can indeed retrieve memories and their associated emotions from the mind of another. In fact, Legilimency is most often an interrogation technique, used to extract a certain memory or set of memories – say, those of your interactions with Potter or Order members. In rarer cases, Legilimency could be used for control by implanting thoughts or memories. In any case, you see that Occlumency can be very useful for your protection and also to prevent strategic information from being relayed to the enemy."

She was trying not to raise her hand; it was creeping past her chin. "Sir – is Legilimency always a Dark Art?"

"If the parties have agreed on equal terms to the exercise, such as a teacher and student of Occlumency, then no. In this case it is no different than practicing jinxes and counter-jinxes in class. However, it is hardly ever used in this manner except in the classroom. In the real world, Legilimency is nearly always employed for forceful interrogation, coercion, and control. Thoughts can be very powerful weapons indeed.

"My own opinion is that Legilimency often, but not always, is employed as a Dark Art, since it normally involves a person being forced to divulge information against her will and without her consent. For this reason, I would classify the study of Occlumency not only in the realm of mental magic but as a branch of Defence Against the Dark Arts.

"To understand the techniques an Occlumens employs, we must begin by examining what happens upon the casting of the Legilimens. When an attacker first enters an untrained mind, he is confronted with various memories and emotions that the spell has retrieved to the surface of consciousness. Because human memory tends toward the visual, the Legilimens often sees images. For this reason and lack of better descriptive language, we tend to casually refer to a Legilimens's experience as 'seeing'. But the content he gathers could well be auditory or derived from other senses as the mind has recorded it.

"These surface impressions are his point of entry into the network of related memories that together encompass – well, the entire mind, the self. The Legilimens chooses which paths of linked memories he wishes to follow – that is, unless certain ones are hidden or blocked through Occlumency.

"Now the nature of the bonds between memories is very important to how Occlumency works. Memories may be linked by cognitive themes – perhaps a subject like Potions or a specific person, place, or time. So as an Occlumens, you may anticipate which themes will be of interest to your adversary and be prepared to isolate and Occlude the relevant memories.

"Memories are also related through their associated emotions. Typically, the stronger the emotion, the stronger the attached set of memories and the more accessible they are to the Legilimens. This is because the physical traces of emotions – a rush of adrenaline with fear, for example – are strong signals; they draw a Legilimens's attention, lead him to memories. He will be searching for these signals; he may even try to provoke you into revealing your feelings. Thus it is crucial that you clear your mind of emotion during Occlumency."

"Sir – will you see exactly what I'm thinking and feeling?"

"No. Legilimency is not mind-reading, as your boyfriend refers to it."

"He's –"

"This is a misleading term based on an erroneous understanding of the concept. The Legilimens cannot 'see' the process of your cognition. He cannot, except in a very vague sense or in the rarest of circumstances, know what you are thinking or have thought in the past. He gathers the sensory data through the spell. But the interpretation – the meaning he ascribes to the content – this is entirely his own. His conclusions are heavily influenced by which memories he chooses to follow or which the Occlumens allows him access to. Even when he studies a particular memory in detail, he remains always limited by his own observational skills, his prior knowledge, his assumptions."

"So – you're saying even if I'm not Occluding, the Legilimens might not interpret correctly?"

"If you are assuming that the Occlumens's 'interpretation' of her own memory is the 'correct' one, yes, that is what I'm saying. But it is never safe to rely on that possibility. It is equally possible that the Legilimens could have insights into the memory that had never occurred to its owner.

"Take for a moment the crude analogy we just discussed of reading a book. The words may be always the same, but an understanding of the text depends heavily on the reader. He may be an expert, or he may lack an adequate vocabulary or context to understand a word of it. He may misread and think the author is saying one thing when really it is quite another, or he may see things the author never thought of. Or you may think of it this way: If you are an arithmancer, the invading Legilimens may retrieve your equations but have no understanding of their meaning. Or he may create a new theory all his own. In any case, he always imposes his particular viewpoint."

"Is that why Harry doesn't understand his visions completely or why You-Know –"

"Granger! I told you we would not discuss that."

"Sorry."

I handed her a simple syllabus, modified from the one given Potter (at which he had not even glanced and which he had then left behind in the office): "You will learn first to resist by straight blocking, preventing my access to as much of your mind as possible, in whatever manner you can. This is relatively straightforward but very exhausting. You will then move to more refined, energy-conserving techniques. You will practice selective blocking, hiding memories, and – if you progress adequately – you may eventually learn to offer misleading memories or emotions to the Legilimens to deflect his attack without his awareness that you are doing so.

"We will start with simple resistance. Are you ready to begin?"

"Wait! I'm not ready yet; I've, erm, I've still got questions. Can a Legilimens track any emotion?"

"In theory, yes. It depends on his skill. Any good Legilimens will plan in advance to anticipate which surface memories or feelings may lead to his objective so that he may begin to track them as swiftly as possible upon entry. Fear, anger, pain, anxiety, any emotions that correspond to a fight-or-flight physical response, produce strong and easily detectable chemical effects and are easiest to track. They are also the most relevant to a real-world situation in which you might face a Dark adversary.

"But in theory, a Legilimens could seek other emotional traces. Physical pleasure is relatively easy to detect, more diffuse feelings such as contentment less so. Albus – the Headmaster, that is – is very good at tracking these, ah . . . more lighthearted sentiments. You needn't worry about him, of course. And the Dark Lord, though a very powerful Legilimens, is not particularly skilled at or interested in any feelings other than negative ones. Positive emotions are . . . somewhat foreign to him. Nevertheless, you ought to attempt to suppress all emotion, regardless of its nature².

"Now. Are you ready?"

Her thin little face looked frightened again. "Miss Granger – though your learning Occlumency may be useful, it is not required. You are not obliged to be here. And – it is not torture, despite what you may have heard. You will not be hurt. And you may stop at any time."

She sat a bit straighter. ". . . Okay. I'm ready."

"I have no desire to dally round your brain. Clear your mind of emotion. When you feel the Legilimens, you are to resist with as much force as possible. You may wish to bring to mind a point of focus to help you resist. Practitioners often choose an image, a sound or sensation – for instance, a locked room, a body of water, a colour, a cloud, something within which to hide your memories and emotions."

She nodded faintly. Upon the count of three, I cast the Legilimens and thrust gently into her mind.

The experience of Legilimency is indescribable. I shall attempt here a rough approximation of what followed:

The office vanished, and I found myself in the midst of an immense library. I recognised it at once as a mental invention of hers, an idealised form upon which she was focusing. Modeled after Hogwarts's library, hers far surpassed it: Ribbed vaulting arched across the high ceilings and drew the eye upward to towering shelves, each lined by books as numerous as leaves in a grove, that stretched in a multi-layered labyrinth so vast it seemed without beginning or end. Long shafts of sunlight filtered in through clerestory east-facing windows to the room's nave-like centre and illumined two desks, their surfaces grained and knotted and scratched by years of hard work. The surrounding catalogued aisles lay in shadow. I smelled antiquity, onionskin, sacred knowledge, heard the bewitching, beckoning hush of rare texts in the crannies and nooks.

I ought to have known she would choose the bloody library as her focus. Actually, it was not a bad move on her part. Her strategy was sound if transparent: The dense folds of memory packed into pages would be more difficult to penetrate, and though the library's construction was imperfect, its not-quite-impervious surface marred by flickers of recent memories – a day-by-day pre-O.W.L.s schedule of study, a curl of smoke issuing from Hagrid's hut – and by jolts of nervous energy, her mental focus was impressive. I had been wrong: She clearly had gleaned something from the texts besides definitions and had practiced some techniques before her arrival.

Curious, I glanced at some of the spines on the shelves, the repositories of her academic memories in all their prodigious detail. They were organised by subject. Arithmancy and Runes loomed large; she appeared to have read Hogwarts: A History in its entirety at least twice (how dull). I lingered for longer than necessary at the Potions shelf, which contained pages and pages on Polyjuice. As I went, I could not help but note the distinctly pleasurable dopaminergic surges that accompanied her memories of reading and puzzle-solving. I saw too, with pleasant surprise, that she was nearly as familiar with the Restricted Section as I had been at her age, though sadly she had hardly ventured into the Dark Arts themselves. But she had a decent amount of Defence reading under her belt.

From that particular bookshelf, a filamentous thought-thread spun outward to a cluster of related episodes: an army of adolescents practicing spells in the Room of Requirement, dozens of would-be heroes sneaking up to its seventh floor location at all hours. (So! Another scheme of Potter's. She had indeed been deceiving me all along, using my counsel on Defence for this illicit end and me none the wiser. To think, I had nearly been tempted to believe she had a genuine interest in the subject.) I filed away observations in case future leverage was called for: the flickering torches, replicas of those in my dungeon; a parchment pinned to the wall filled with dozens of signatures; the conspicuous absence of Slytherin students; a familiar collection of Defence texts; a Foe-glass; a Sneakoscope.

At this early stage in the exercise, Miss Granger was in all likelihood viewing the same succession of memories as I. She had felt the spell's touch, the fullness of entry, but I could tell that she was not yet aware of my presence; she could not yet locate the Legilimens's path through her memory. Her confusion was mounting; the untutored strands of her magic groped blindly about. With careful deliberateness, I set an incorporeal, invisible palm against the bare, exposed wall, and with the delicacy of a feather gave a firm little push. A ripple like water ran through it, its smoothness broken.

Suddenly, transported by some quirk of association, I was in my own classroom. At its head sat Snape at his desk – or rather, a false-Snape, the Snape of her memory. What terrible luck I had! I, the Legilimens, balked and made to leave, for I had meant to avoid precisely this encounter. But then there came over me the slight tug of curiosity, not easily justified yet difficult to resist. I risked a brief glance at his desk. How strange to see my Double through the medium of her mind, with such a deceptive air of reality! He was surrounded by a tattered brood of papers and books, the shelves behind him clad with cracked leather bindings. Head bent, he worked steadily, calmly, his hands long and slender and pale, his left forearm delicately covered, his quill scratching methodically. He was not quite the caricature, the ugly old bat, of Potter's memories; rather, it was as if I encountered an enantiomer of myself, as does a man used only to viewing his mirror-reflection who is suddenly faced with his portrait, a slightly altered version that makes him uncertain which image is better or worse or which is a truer representation.

Her tension and fear of punishment pressed tightly against me; memory-fragments thronged guiltily round: Potter's advice on Occlumency: "You try it some time – Snape trying to get inside your head – it's not a bundle of laughs, you know!" She, now descending the stairs from the Room of Requirement, now crouched in a dark first-floor corridor; a shadow-Snape spoke to her softly. "I'd like to learn sometime," she whispered, defiance and curiosity and shame mingling muddily within her. My office, dark and silent, all edges and angles, and the locked Potions cabinet within, forbidden, forbidding, to which she crept closer and closer, now disarming its wards with a surge of pride, her fingers now darting in to grab her forbidden prize. Now out to the grounds, where over the Quidditch pitch a girlchild-Granger, a mere sprig, waved a painstakingly Charmed set of red and gold banners. She, minutes later, in the stands very near to where memory-Snape stood, watched him anxiously. He was much too preoccupied with scowling and muttering at the imposter Quirrell to notice the slim shadow creeping up behind him, whispering well-chosen words, setting flame to his favourite robes (She! Deceitful elf! She knew that spell as a first year?), then proudly, furtively scurrying away as he cursed into empty thin air.

At this point, a thick pressure enclosed me; she was, weakly but steadily, attempting a barrier. The stands wavered and dimmed; I was swept back to the library as she refocused her mind. Good – she was starting to learn. I dodged her, swept back through the stacks till my eye caught a half-hidden shelf with the labels 'Blood, Purity' and a glimpse of old memories cobbled together, laced with anxiety: Her first ride to Hogwarts, every compartment of the Express already filled with chattering friends, nowhere to sit. An elf rights petition with one name at the top. The high voice of a second-year Malfoy, a word hurled at her: "Mudblood!" Its echo again and again in her mind, gaining strength, gaining power, as she pored over spellbooks late into the night, as she lifted her chin in the hall past a group of Slytherin pure-bloods³ (she would show them who could do magic, wouldn't she?), as she gripped her new Gryffindor prefect's badge tight, as she squirmed in her seat in my classroom, desperate to prove herself with every stretch of her little hand in the air, higher and higher –

"Emotions, Miss Granger. Calm yourself," I said aloud. Her anxiety did not fade (in fact, it increased), but she managed a block, more solid than the previous. The classroom vanished and the library facade reappeared, but darker now, the shade more opaque, the high shelves now like dense interior walls of the memory-maze. I hid in the furrows between them, slipped like a shadow from shelf to shelf, circuit to circuit, retracing at synaptic speed the scenes from her history: A clandestine round of Butterbeer in the Gryffindor common room. The Weasley Burrow: warm supper, a firelit hearth surrounded by the family that had taken her in as one of their own. A girl's bedroom filled with treasured, creased volumes of Muggle fairy tales, stories that she knew by heart, told in the deep authoritative voice of her father, stories full of make-believe magic that she had long since ceased to believe in. A wood-paneled study, yet more books, these practical and reliably factual, handsomely bound and prominently displayed, and a glimpse of a man behind a paper and tea. The same man with his hand in her mother's, a goggling proto-Granger in tow, as they strolled with a dense herd of Muggles through a neon-lit New York square on their way to the theatre. The magical letter from Hogwarts, carefully folded and saved, as we all had done, in its envelope labeled in Albus's flowery script: Ms. Hermione Granger. As I went, her defences, at first slow and weak, became surer and faster as she arrested my movements through her mind, returning me to the library, vanishing the memories and their related emotions and links. At last, I broke off. The whole exercise took maybe ten seconds at most.

I breathed in relief; the exercise had not been nearly as painful or taxing as I had feared. She had a much cooler head than Potter and had comported herself appropriately. I had maintained composure as well and, despite the incidental stumbles over my doppelganger, had managed to exercise proper pedagogic restraint and effectively skirt certain areas of an adolescent girl's mind into which a professor had no business prying. She had displayed some rudimentary skill at blocking and an apparent appreciation for learning the techniques, if not the art, of evasion. Perhaps, I thought, these sessions would not be so wholly unpleasant.

I observed that a light perspiration had broken out on her forehead; her breathing had quickened. She still sat in her chair; the desk stood safely between us. She said in a small voice, "How did I do? I tried to block you; did it work at all?"

I felt content enough to toy with her a bit: "Miss Granger, you set me on fire."

She, pausing, trembling: "I do?"

"You did. Or do you not remember that little incident from your first year on the Quidditch pitch? You thought I was rigging the game, did you? I'd no idea you hated me so much."

She flushed, clearly having been unaware of my perusal of that particular memory (a common beginner mistake; one must attune to every surfacing memory, however brief), and squeaked, to my amusement, "No, I don't hate you at all! I didn't then either; I-I was only a first-year, and – and I know I was wrong; now I know it was Quirrell trying to tip the match, but – It was Harry; he convinced me you were out to jinx him –"

"Do not put it past me," I said with mock sternness, but I was not as upset as I might have been at her childish arson, for I was now enjoying her obvious shame and remorse at the act and her look of contrition.

"Am I in trouble?" she said mournfully.

I gave a long smirk as she squirmed. "I think for now it might be best to keep your little secrets between us," I said finally, and whether she breathed in relief or in dread I did not know.

On the second attempt, I trod along the acrid trail of her fears. Down, down I descended, to deep within Hogwarts's dank heart. I felt the raw edge of her panic as a Devil's Snare tightened round Weasley and Potter; snake-tendrils rubbed into her flesh as her mind raced through spells. Weasley, unmoving, inert, on an enameled chess-chequered floor. The crushing numbness inside her as she left him behind. Then up, up to the library and a moment of fatal, petrifying certainty as she saw in her mirror the eye of the basilisk, the terrible serpent-king, turned upon her, as she clutched with wild, terrified excitement the final clue scribbled on parchment that she must deliver to Weasley and Potter: PIPES. The chain of a Time-Turner cold round her neck as Potter whispered, "Sirius can escape . . ." "Nobody's supposed to change time," she quavered, half-expecting the universe to collapse any second. A black thundercloud over the Quidditch pitch, a chill wind, a crowd's choking gasp as Potter fell limp from his Nimbus. A wood filled with screams and a grisly green light as the Dark Mark rose above through the sky. Another sky, bright above Hogwarts's turrets, the ground far, far below her as she struggled in vain to control a galloping broomstick. The winnow of wind through bristles. All motion and blur. Weasley's shrill laughter was throwing her off balance; all the boys were laughing and pointing. (Yes, I too knew this feeling.) And in absurdly rich detail, steeped in palpable shame, the recurrent vision of every one of her O.W.L.s marked "T". "You are a failure," I had written in red on her Potions exam. Her fear swelled and ebbed as she fought to submerge it, as through each cortical passage, each limbic strand of her memory-web, I stole, steered a sinuous course, revolved round and backtracked, till I finally felt her resistance, gentle but firm, rise against me, till sight was extinguished to darkness and I could no longer advance.

This pattern we repeated and practiced until she had learnt to position her strength, to form and re-form it ahead of the Legilimens's line of attack and to stop him before he could reach any memory. She worked hard and by lesson's end had progressed in a not unsatisfactory manner. And afterwards, I carefully preserved in my Pensieve her memories, or rather, my memory of her memories, a bit fuzzy but still complete, in the event they were needed to further her lessons, of course.

1 Which Potter had indeed given, despite all his whinging.

² In truth, I doubted the Dark Lord would ever bat an eye at her, but it did no harm to mention the possibility as an extra incentive for study.

³ Her memory on this point was inaccurate. Two of the group were of half-blood descent, and another dreaded his peers' discovery that he was adopted; his Muggle-born birth parents had only too gladly abandoned the little boy whose tantrums invariably coincided with the spontaneous combustion of furniture. As Slytherin Head of house, I of course was required to have full knowledge of the heritage of all house members.

Author's Notes:

* There are one or two quotes from OOTP echoed here ("Resist with as much force as possible." "You try it some time...") and also from POA ("Sirius can escape" and "Nobody's supposed to change time").

* Please check out Millie Joan's excellent fic Camerado for a more in-depth treatment of Occlumency; I'm indebted to her and others' previous insights.

* Thank you to Countrymouse and Hollimel for editing and assistance.